Scars
by sugah66
Summary: [HIATUS] They both have scars. Not all of them are visible. DannyOC, MS. Sequel to Falling, follows Whisper.
1. One of Those Days: Danny

**TITLE: Scars  
****AUTHOR: Sugah Sugah  
****SUMMARY: They both have scars. Not all of them are visible.  
****SPOILERS: general season 3  
****PAIRING: Danny/OC, some M/S  
****RATING: M – I tried to keep it clean, but you know Danny and Molly.  
****DISCLAIMER: Insert comical "please don't sue" remark here.  
****AUTHOR'S NOTE: The long-awaited multi-chapter sequel to "Falling", set approximately five months after the events of "Whisper" (roughly March/April). I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get this up. Season 4 kind of decreased my motivation. And I suck. Anyway, some of the stuff that happened in "Falling" is going to come up in this, so if you haven't read that already, you might want to go do that now. I'll wait.**

**AU. Season 4 never happened. Martin was never shot or addicted to painkillers. Jack never knocked up his dead friend's widow. Elena who? Yeah, you get the point.**

**This chapter is short, but it gets the ball rolling. I'm in the process of moving, so I don't know when the next update will be.**

**Also, what is Vivian's son's name? I forget.**

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**Scars**

**_"Sometimes the deepest scars are the ones that you can't see." – Rowan Meade_**

These were the days that Danny Taylor hated the most – those days when the case was so gruesome, so horrifying, that it made him doubt all of humanity. Today was one of those cases where they tracked every viable piece of evidence, exhausted every possible lead, and ended up finding the missing person floating in the Hudson, having been dead almost as soon as he vanished. Danny had stood on the bank with Martin and Viv, watching as someone from the coroner's office pulled the bloated body of William Franks, age thirty-five, from the chilly waters of the river.

Franks's face was frozen in a perpetual scream, and though Danny was hardly squeamish and had seen more than his fair share of dead bodies, the sight made him ill. He turned away, his eyes coming to rest on the Statue of Liberty in the distance. _Land of the free,_ he thought with a grimace. _Land where you stand a better chance of dying before the age of forty than you do of buying a new car that doesn't crap out on you after a year._ Days like this made him hate the fact that he was a human being. Days like this made him rethink his choice of career.

Days like this made him glad that he had someone to go home to.

He let his mind drift to the woman who would be waiting for him when he arrived. It was close to dinner time, so she would have already started cooking, and if he was lucky, she would have already decided that they would be staying in that evening – and revealed her decision by standing in the kitchen wearing one of his shirts and little, if anything, else. He loved nights when he came home to that. Moments like that almost made him forget seeing something like William Franks – almost made him forget that he had been seeing a lot more somethings like William Franks lately.

Jack approached the three of them, his expression somber. He used his head to gesture at Franks's body, which the coroner was wheeling to the van. "The police will take it from here," he said. His voice was hollow, defeated, much like it had been for weeks.

They were silent for a moment, until Martin voiced the thought Danny knew they had all been thinking. "That's the fourth one in three weeks."

"People get depressed around the holidays," Jack said, though his tone was unconvincing. He didn't even seem to believe himself. People got depressed around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not Easter, which was less than two weeks away. Danny had never heard of a rash of suicides because Easter was just around the corner. Still, it was always a possibility. This was New York. Stranger things had happened.

Viv didn't appear to buy Jack's excuse any more than Danny did. "You think it's a suicide?"

Jack shrugged. "We'll let the crime scene guys do their jobs. It's what they're paid to do. But it's not our concern anymore."

Danny felt his eyes being drawn to the coroner's van, which was rapidly speeding away. He cast a quick glance upriver, where the investigators from the crime scene unit were already processing the scene. Then he returned his gaze to Jack.

It was a rare occurrence to pull a body from the Hudson anymore. That it had happened four times in less than a month was suspicious. Suicide, Danny knew, was a statement; the fast current of the river often made finding bodies impossible, and people who committed suicide wanted to be found – if they were going to leap at all, they generally leapt from buildings. Finding a body in the Hudson reeked, not of suicide, but of body disposal. It reminded Danny of something the mafia might do.

"Look," Jack said, starting Danny out of his reverie, "it's been a long couple of days – a long few weeks – so why don't you guys head home." Jack's eyes darted from face to face. He looked older – his face haggard, his eyes haunted. The job was aging him. It was aging all of them. "We can finish the paperwork in the morning."

Martin and Viv exchanged a look and nodded at Jack. Both had reasons for wanting to leave early; Viv's son had mono and as a result had contracted a nasty eye infection. Martin was no doubt anxious to return to Sam, who was late into her first trimester and battling a serious bout of morning sickness. She managed to come into work a few times that week, but Jack usually sent her home after a few hours. She was no help to anyone throwing up in the bathroom. Danny watched them go, counting the minutes until he would be walking through his own front door, and turned to spare one last glance at Jack.

The guy looked like he just found out his dog had died. His father's health was failing, and his ex-wife still had custody of his daughters in Chicago. The man quite literally had no place to go. Danny briefly entertained the idea of asking Jack if he wanted to go out for a drink, but quickly decided against it. The pull of Molly wearing very little clothing was more appealing than watching Jack drown his sorrows in alcohol and then driving his drunk ass home. He'd had enough of that to last him a lifetime.

"See you tomorrow, Jack," he said, offering his boss a small wave as he turned and made his way back to his car.

"Good night, Danny," Jack said, though Danny could barely hear his voice over the sound of rushing water.

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As he had predicted, Molly had decided that they were staying in that night. When he opened the door of their apartment and walked into the kitchen, she was standing at the stove wearing one of his old T-shirts and a pair of panties. She was barefoot, and her glorious red hair was pulled up in a hasty ponytail. Several wisps of hair poked out of the whole mess, clinging to the beads of sweat that dotted the back of her neck.

She was focused on the task at hand and started when he slipped his arms around her waist. Almost immediately, though, she leaned back against him, their food forgotten. He kissed her temple and rested his forehead against her shoulder, breathing in the smell that was uniquely her.

She covered his hands with her own, squeezed them lightly, then returned to her cooking. "Bad day?" she said.

He nodded against her neck, not trusting himself to speak.

"Poor baby," she said. She said that a lot, whenever he came home complaining about his job, and she usually said it with amusement, her eyes sparkling, her dimples visible. But there was no mirth in her tone tonight. She read the papers. She knew what was happening. And she knew what it was doing to Danny and the rest of the team. "Another one?"

He nodded again, tightening his grip around her waist.

He heard her fiddling with the knobs on the stove but didn't raise his head from the crook of her neck to see what she was doing. "It's a little odd, don't you think?" she asked. Something clanged, which he suspected was her moving the skillet from one burner to another. "Fourth jumper in three weeks. Are you guys thinking serial killer?"

Danny pulled his head from her shoulder. "I really don't want to talk about work right now," he said into her ear. She craned her head around to look at him. "Please, can we just talk about something else?"

Molly smiled, her eyes compassionate, and nodded. She turned in his arms so that she was facing him and stretched up on her toes to press a light kiss to his lips. "Or," she said, and his ears perked at the change in her tone, "we don't have to talk at all."

He grinned and captured her lips once more. When he pulled away, he said, "I like the sound of that."

Their dinner lay forgotten on the stove.

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Danny prided himself on his increased stamina. Six months ago, he would've been the first one to fall asleep after sex. Now, it was Molly who first faded into slumber, so exhausted from their trysts that she lacked the energy even to crawl under the covers. They never made it under the covers. They could never stand to wait long enough to do that. It required too much effort – too much time would be wasted. So they didn't bother. It really didn't matter. Danny didn't care. It gave him ample opportunity to study Molly while she slept.

They both had scars; not all of them were visible. Sometimes, when Molly was asleep, Danny liked to trace her scars with his finger. He wasn't sure why, and he couldn't explain how it made him feel, but he liked that he had such intimate knowledge of Molly – that he was one of very few people who had seen the location of her scars. He supposed it would be similar if she had a tattoo on her inner thigh. Which she did – a butterfly – and it was sexy as all hell.

There were the usual scars, the ordinary childhood mishaps, the kind that every kid got – or should get – at least once in his lifetime. The scar on Danny's left knee was from when he was eleven – a spectacular wipeout while attempting to skateboard down a railing in Central Park. Molly had a scar on the top of her right foot from when she fell out of the top bunk at summer camp when she was seven. Danny had a scar on his right forearm from some broken glass at home plate during a pickup baseball game in high school. The scar just above Molly's eye was a relic of her losing battle with a chain link fence in junior high.

Then there were the scars they had given to each other – bite marks, scratches. It was tangible evidence of the passion they shared. They never left hickeys. Hickeys were for horny teenagers who hadn't yet made it to third base. Besides, hickeys faded too soon. The marks they bore didn't disappear so easily. Their scars were just as overt and permanent as the rings they both secretly longed to wear but would never admit it. Molly had a particular fondness for Danny's collarbone, just above his heart, and his back resembled a Tic Tac Toe board. He tended to leave his marks in places that no one else could see – her breasts, the inside of her thigh. Once in a while, if he wanted to teach her a lesson, he would nip at her neck hard enough to bruise. She would rant and rave about how she couldn't go into work like that, but Danny had a sneaking suspicion that she loved it.

Danny knew all of Molly's scars. He just didn't know how she had gotten all of them. Even after a year together, she still had her secrets. She shared anecdotes from her time as a wayward youth, but she didn't tell him everything. Some scars were too deep for that. He didn't push, he didn't pry, and he didn't protest, because he didn't tell her everything either. He didn't tell her how he had gotten the scars on his biceps that looked suspiciously like cigarette burns. He didn't tell her why he only had half of his right pinky toe.

Some of her scars, she claimed not to know how she had gotten them, which was a distinct possibility. Like him, she had spent several years in an alcohol-induced haze. It was more than likely that some of the scars on her arms and likes were from accidents she'd had while drunk. He had several of those, as well – on the small of his back, on his shoulders. He honestly could not remember how he had gotten them.

Her only unexplained scar – the one she knew where it came from and simply wouldn't tell him – was the one that ran the length of her belly. It was disgusting and unseemly, and if had been any deeper, it probably would have been fatal. He had asked about it only once; she had changed the subject so quickly that his head spun, and he learned his lesson. That scar, apparently, was a sore subject. So he didn't ask again. But he often wondered about it, at times like these, when she was asleep and his fingers were inexplicably drawn the long, ropy scar along her abdomen.

He couldn't help but wonder about it. He created scenarios in his mind to explain how she could have gotten it. The one he tended to gravitate towards was the one where she got attacked while in the field. She was a CIA operative, a fairly valuable one, so surely she would be worth something to the Agency. But she so rarely worked in the field that Danny knew that couldn't be the answer. Still, any other explanation, Danny did not want to think about. He liked thinking about Molly's less-than-reputable past about as much as he liked thinking about his, which was not at all. She was a different person now. They both were.

But that scar… It sometimes haunted his dreams. He imagined Molly lying in a pool of blood at the tender age of seventeen, having wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time. A scar like that would run deeper than the skin. The memory associated with that scar was so traumatic for her that she wouldn't even bring it up. It must have been terrifying for her. He wished she would let him in.

He lightly ran his fingers along the scar, and Molly moaned in her sleep – a low and highly arousing sound that had him rising to the occasion once more. When he raised his eyes to her face, he saw that she was awake, and her eyes were that dark, murky green color he had come to know and love. She shifted position so that she could run her toes along the inside of his leg, and he needed little more encouragement. It was time to make another scar.


	2. One of Those Days: Molly

**A/N: Luckily, I did not have to deal with massive lines at airport security when I flew out on Saturday. Just goes to show that no one goes to Cleveland.**

**I realized as I was writing this that it supposedly takes place several months ago. Well, whatever. Suspension of disbelief. Learn it. Live it. Love it.**

**Reggie. Thanks, anmodo!**

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Molly knew it was going to be one of those days as soon as she woke up. She had a knack for knowing things like that right off the bat. Danny had mentioned more than once that perhaps having that attitude so early in the day was what made it become "one of those days", but she maintained that he was crazy and had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

She woke up to the shrill shriek of her alarm. She rolled over to hit the snooze button – unencumbered due to the absence of Danny's weight on top of her – only to realize that Danny had once again moved the alarm to the other side of the bedroom. He did that on occasion, in order to make her get out of bed and stop hitting snooze. He said it was because she hit the snooze button for nearly an hour, and it drove him nuts. _If you're going to do that, why not just set the alarm for an hour later?_ he would say. And she would look at him and shake her head sadly. _You just don't get it,_ she would say.

Truth be told, she hit the snooze button so many times because she secretly wanted Danny to continue to think of new and creative ways to rouse her from "slumber". She lay in bed for quite some time after she was awake waiting for him to do something – anything. She'd been awarded those fabulous wake-up calls precious few times, but it was worth it every time. That man could do amazing things with his mouth.

Molly threw her pillow at her alarm, knocking it off the dresser. Unfortunately, it did nothing to silence the shriek. She was forced to climb out from under the warmth and sanctity of the covers and turn the damn thing off. She was just stumbling back to the bed when Danny appeared in the doorway.

"You weren't going back to bed, were you?" he asked, even though from the tone of his voice and the look in his eye, he already knew the answer.

"Of course not," Molly said, collapsing on top of the sheets and snuggling up to her pillow. "I'm meditating. It's a good way to start the day."

Danny strolled over to the bed and tapped her bare feet. "Come on. Get up."

"Go away." She kicked at him. "You're ruining my concentration."

He sighed, gripped her ankles, and gave a good yank, pulling her several inches down the bed, so that now her legs dangled off the edge from the knee down. She buried her face in her pillow. "You know, Martin never has trouble getting Sam to wake up."

Molly rolled her eyes, though Danny couldn't see, as her face was still buried in her pillow. "That's because Sam is super human," she said, her voice muffled, "and doesn't sleep."

He gave another tug, and her hips were suddenly precariously balanced on the edge of the mattress. At least she still had her pillow. "I made coffee."

She resisted the urge to kick him again, afraid that she might damage parts of his anatomy that she often expressed appreciation for. "Call me when you turn water into wine. That's something that's worth getting out of bed for."

"You're going to be late."

Molly snorted into her pillow. "Like I care." She most likely wouldn't be doing anything of importance at the office, anyway. Homeland Security was dealing with the latest terrorist threat – liquid explosives being smuggled onto planes via carry-on baggage. She had had very little to do for the past several days, ever since decoding an encrypted message about the deadly shampoo bottles. The DHS operatives had swooped down on that so fast that she was still dizzy. It made her wonder why she got paid so much, if people were going to do her job for her. Not that she was really complaining. But still, it made for boring days at the office. Jimmy was hardly fascinating company.

Danny lifted her leg. She sensed what he was about to do even before he did it, and she lifted her face from her pillow to glare at him. "You wouldn't dare."

He grinned, resting his fingertips on the sole of her foot. "Oh, I would."

She narrowed her eyes further, attempting to gauge the sincerity of his statement. It was too early in the morning to think, so she couldn't tell if he was bluffing. Apparently, she waited too long to act, because in the next instant, Danny was running his fingers along the bottom of her foot and she was struggling to pull her leg free of his grasp. She rolled onto her back – a Herculean effort given that he had a death grip on her foot – and attempted to slide backwards along the bed. But Danny held tight. Eventually, she was forced to cave. "All right! All right! I'm up!"

He dropped her leg. "You're a dead man, Agent Taylor," she said, and she pounced. In seconds, she had him pinned to the bed and was straddling his hips. "I'm disappointed. You didn't put up much of a fight."

Danny made a choking noise, his hands settling on the curve of her hips. "Like I would really fight back."

Molly grinned and dropped a slow, deliberate kiss on his lips. He responded with full fervor, his hands tightening their grip on her hips, the muscles in his stomach tensing with anticipation. She indulged him a few more moments – for her benefit as much as his – and then abruptly pulled away and slid off the bed.

She was almost to the door when Danny propped himself up on his elbows. "Are you kidding me?" he asked, his voice strained.

She smiled demurely and pumped as much innocence into her tone as possible, trying to pretend that she wasn't just as aroused as he was by their brief interlude. "I'm going to be late. And you made coffee."

His frustrated groan followed her out the door and into the kitchen.

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Numbers were everywhere. It was a mess. She was never going to make any sense of this the way she was going. She was going to have to start over. But that would take too much time; time that she didn't have.

"What are you doing?" Jimmy asked. He half-stood out of his chair to peer over her computer monitor, so that he could get a decent view of her desk, where she was doing yet another Sudoku puzzle. She'd gotten addicted to the logic problems with her abundance of free time at the office. "Seriously?"

"Keeps my mind sharp," she said, not really paying attention. She'd learned long ago to tune Jimmy out. The sound of his voice was like white noise. She really didn't hear it anymore. If she happened to look at him while she was talking, she imagined that he sounded like all the adults in the "Peanuts" cartoons. If she squinted and tilted her head to the side, he kind of looked like Franklin.

Jimmy rolled his eyes and sat down heavily. He was slightly superior to her – by half a level of government clearance. That, coupled with the fact that he was six years older and had a Ph.D. from MIT apparently gave him the excuse to act like her boss. But he wasn't her boss. He wasn't her supervisor. He wasn't even technically her partner. He was a colleague – just an annoying grunt with an extra month of experience and two unnecessary extra degrees. "So does, you know, work."

"Uh-huh." She scribbled a seven in the center block in the top left square. She followed the row with her pencil. That meant that the other seven had to go in the bottom left block of the center square. She wrote that in, too.

"Are you even listening to me?"

Molly chewed on the eraser of her pencil, a nasty nervous habit she had no doubt picked up from Danny. Where did the last seven go? "Uh-huh."

"No, you're not." He banged on his desk with his ruler. She jumped at the sudden noise.

"Sorry, what?" She glanced at him over the top of her book. "I wasn't listening."

Jimmy looked very much like he was going to give her a stern talking-to, but he didn't have the chance, as Dave wisely chose that moment to grace them with his presence. He walked right up to her desk, completely ignored the fact that she was doing puzzles instead of her job, and leaned forward so far that his nose just barely brushed against hers.

She blinked, but his face was still fuzzy; he was a little too close. "Dave," she said, pulling her head back just a hair, so that she could breathe, "we've talked about personal boundaries before. I don't know about you, but I'm not anxious to sit through another sexual harassment seminar."

Dave ignored her. "Your boyfriend works for missing persons, yeah?"

Molly cocked an eyebrow. She wasn't sure which was more surprising – the fact that Dave was showing an interest in her private life, or the fact that he had not only paid attention to but also remembered when she happened to mention her private life. She nodded, unsure of where this conversation could possibly be going, but positive she wouldn't like it. "Yeah."

Instead of explaining his random question, he dropped a file folder on top of her Sudoku book. Even Jimmy poked his head over his computer with interest. Molly cautiously picked up the folder and opened it. Inside were dozens of surveillance reports, personality profiles, and photographs of a middle-aged man named Alexander Dubai. According to the profile, he was Iranian, but he looked Slavic. Maybe it was the unibrow.

She briefly perused the contents of the folder and then raised her eyes to meet her boss's. "And?"

Dave made a noise of disbelief in the back of his throat, like he could not believe how stupid she was that she hadn't made the connection. "He's missing."

Molly bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something snarky, but she couldn't resist. "And?"

Dave snatched the folder from her hands so violently that Molly started. "Special Agent Dubai was infiltrating the terrorist ring responsible for attempting to smuggle liquid explosives through JFK."

"Oh."_ Of course. How could I not have made that connection? _

"And now he's missing."

Molly furrowed her brow in confusion. "Yeah." She still didn't understand what, if anything, this had to do with her and Danny.

Dave groaned loudly, picked up her phone, and handed it to her. She looked at it as though she had never seen a phone before. "Call your boyfriend and tell him to start investigating Dubai's disappearance now."

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "If I had that kind of pull with the FBI, believe me, they'd all be out looking for Hoffa."

Jimmy, who had since gone back to his work, looked up. "He's fish food by now. No one is ever going to find him."

Molly leaned back in her seat so that she could look at him around her computer. "Oh, no way. He's buried in Giants Stadium."

Jimmy shook his head sadly, as though he couldn't believe what idiots he had to work with. "They debunked that urban legend ages ago. Don't you watch 'Myth Busters'?"

She smiled sweetly. "No. I have a life."

Dave hooked one of his feet around the legs of her chair and pulled her along the floor until she was directly in front of him. There was a manic glint in his eyes that she had only ever seen once before, and she swallowed unconsciously. She knew it was going to be one of those days when she woke up that morning. She just knew it.

"Sheehan," Dave said through clenched teeth, and Molly gulped again, "I am talking about a fellow agent here. This ring is unscrupulous. They have a tendency to dispose of people who displease them by tossing them off the George Washington Bridge."

Molly stared. Four suicides in the past three weeks, all of them pulled out of the Hudson, downstream from the GW. Danny's team had investigated all four disappearances, and each time it was determined to be suicide – but that many people jumping off a bridge was unusual, even for New York. Most jumpers chose buildings and crowded sidewalks. She knew Danny and the others suspected that there was more to these cases than what was on the surface, but there had been no reason to believe that these four deaths were anything more than tragic suicides.

Well, Dave had made her a believer.

Molly stood up and yanked the file from Dave's hands. She pulled her coat off the hook by the door and haphazardly put it on, somehow managing to put her arms through the wrong sleeves, so that the back of the coat was in front and the zipper was in the back. She looked down, but chose to leave it.

"I'm taking lunch," she said, scampering down the hall to the elevators.

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No one stopped her as she wound her way through the FBI office. She was almost a regular fixture there. Sometimes, on her lunch break, she dropped by to bring the missing persons unit coffee – good coffee, not the sludge they made in the break room. If the team was working late on a particular trying case, she showed up with pizza from her favorite pizzeria. She knew most of the staff by name, including the janitors, even though Stefan referred to her as "Little Red Head Girl". She was the godmother to Martin and Sam's unborn baby and, unless Sam changed her mind in the next three-and-a-half weeks, would be maid of honor at their wedding. Vivian treated her like an adoptive daughter. Even Jack had stopped calling her "Miss Sheehan" months ago.

So it was nothing new to see Molly hurrying her way up to Danny's floor – though it was unusual to see her carrying nothing but a file folder.

When she walked into the office, she noticed that there was a new picture on the dry erase board – one of the pictures in the file folder she was now carrying. _Well, at least I don't have to worry about wasting any of the favors Danny owes me on something for Dave._

Martin, Jack, and Vivian were nowhere to be found. Sam, looking slightly green and nursing what looked to be a mug of tea, was slumped over her desk, a blanket wrapped tightly around her legs. She obviously wasn't moving any time soon. Danny was at one of the tables, obviously following a paper trail. He was surrounded by stacks of bank statements, phone records, and credit card receipts. Molly plopped herself in one of the chairs beside him.

He looked up when she sat down, question appearing in his eyes before it formed on his lips.

"Hey," she said, leaning forward and placing a chaste kiss on his lips, "I need to ask you something."

"Okay," he said, obviously confused. "Shoot."

She opened her mouth to ask, but stopped before the words could come out. She bit her lip. She wasn't quite sure how to phrase this. She laughed, embarrassed that she couldn't figure out how to talk to him, of all people. "I don't really know how to say this," she said, trailing off as she attempted to find the words.

Danny shook his head. "Unbelievable," he said, and something in his tone made her frown. "Are we really going to have this discussion here?"

Molly just stared at him. "What?"

He dropped his head into his hands. "I knew it. I knew, with Marty and Sam's wedding coming up, that you'd want to talk about it."

Molly's eyes widened slightly. _Oh, shit._ "No," she said. "That's not – "

"Look, Molly," Danny said, "you know I love you, but I thought we agreed that neither of us is ready to get married."

Molly sighed. Yes, they had agreed on that. Five months ago. But now was not the time to bring it up, and she couldn't believe that he would think she would come all the way over here in the middle of a work day to talk about this, when she could just corner him at home like she always did.

Danny laid a gentle hand on her arm, his voice soothing, if slightly condescending. "Okay?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I was going to ask," she said, grinding her teeth, "if you had any reason to suspect a connection between your last four cases."

To his credit, he looked embarrassed. "Oh." He was silent for a moment, obviously thinking, and then he shook his head. "Other than manner of death, no. Why?"

Molly dropped the folder on the table in front of him. Danny opened it and came face to face with the very picture pinned up on the dry erase board. He looked at her. "Molly, where did you get this?"

"That's CIA Special Agent Alexander Dubai," Molly said. "He was working undercover, trying to sniff out the men responsible for the latest attempt to bring down US airplanes." Danny's face paled significantly. "Apparently, the group he was infiltrating disposes of people who pose problems by staging their deaths to look like suicides."

Danny ran a hand through his hair. "How?" he asked, though it was evident from his tone that he already knew what the answer was going to be.

"They throw them into the Hudson."

"Fuck," Danny said, reaching automatically for his phone. "I have to call Jack." He dialed Jack's number and raised his eyes to meet hers. "And you have to go back to work."

She nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. "I'll see you tonight?"

Danny nodded. She leaned forward to kiss him goodbye, but he turned away from her at the last second. "Jack? It's Danny. You are not going to believe what I just found out."

Molly sighed and rose from her chair. She'd just known it was going to be one of those days.


	3. Paranoia: Danny

**A/N: Words cannot convey just how much I suck. I'm very sorry that it's taken me this long to update. I did what I always do. I started the story knowing the basic plot but not having anything mapped out and so I kind of got lost with what I wanted to do. But I think I've got it now.**

* * *

Jack carefully examined everything in the file Molly had dropped off. Danny sat in the chair across from his boss, absentmindedly drumming his fingertips on the older man's desk, his foot bouncing up and down with nervous energy. They all had their theories, regarding the unusual circumstances of the supposed suicides of their last four cases, but Danny had never imagined that it could be something like this. Molly seemed almost certain that not only were these four – five, now, with the CIA agent – people connected, but also that they were connected to some sort of terrorist group. It just seemed so…comic book. Television show. Jack Ryan novel. Steven Seagal movie.

"You're sure this source is reliable?" Jack asked suddenly, pulling Danny out of his reverie.

Danny narrowed his eyes. Jack may have slightly warmed up to Molly, but he was far from trusting her, and Danny knew this. That was one reason he tried so very hard to keep his professional life and his personal life as separate as possible. "I'm sure."

"If this theory of yours is true," Jack said, emphasizing the word "yours" for some odd reason, "then we'll have to work with the CIA on this. Maybe DHS. It'll be a jurisdictional nightmare."

"Small price to pay for potentially foiling an international terrorist ring, wouldn't you say?" Danny asked. He slowly cracked his knuckles, something he never used to do before. It helped him release tension. Molly hated it. She claimed it was disgusting.

Jack sighed. "I didn't mean it like that." He rested his elbows on the desk and rubbed his temples. He looked exhausted. "I'm just saying that things could get messy."

Danny simply raised an eyebrow.

"You've never worked with Molly, Danny," Jack said, reaching for his coffee, which had to be cold by now. It wasn't a question; it was a statement of fact.

Danny raised his other eyebrow. Was that concern he detected in his boss's voice? Danny cleared his throat. "No."

While Molly had quasi-helped with the investigation a year ago, they hadn't exactly worked it together. One of the nice things about Molly being CIA was that their paths never crossed. In fact, Molly so rarely worked in the field that sometimes he could pretend she had a regular job. He hated the thought of Molly in harm's way – even though he put his life on the line on a daily basis.

Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. "Working with…someone you're dating… It can be complicated."

Having never worked with Molly at not knowing what she was like while on the job, Danny could see where Jack was coming from with that statement. However, the odds of Molly being assigned to the case were slim to nil, unless they had need to call on her services as a cryptographer, so Danny wasn't worried in the slightest.

Danny abruptly wondered if Jack was referring to Sam.

"Marty and Sam don't seem to have a problem with it," Danny said, narrowing his eyes. He was attempting to gauge Jack's reaction, but unfortunately, he wasn't as adept at interpreting people as Molly was.

The muscles in Jack's jaw twitched as he held his hands up in surrender. "I'll talk to my supervisor."

Danny nodded, satisfied, and left Jack's office. He dug his cell phone out of his coat pocket and was in the process of calling Molly when Martin walked over to him. Danny shoved his phone back in his pocket and nodded to acknowledge his friend. "Hey, Marty."

Martin jerked his head in the general direction of Jack's office. "What did he say?"

"Oh, that this whole case was about to turn into a jurisdictional nightmare." Danny chose not to mention what he had said about dating people you worked with. Jack and Sam's relationship was still a sore spot with Martin, even after so long. Danny couldn't really blame him. The only reason he hadn't morphed into the jealous boyfriend was because he didn't know any of Molly's ex-boyfriends. He got the impression that there hadn't been many – at least in the past few years.

Martin sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes trained on Sam, who was still hunched over her desk, looking ill. "He's not wrong. If what Molly told you is true… This is going to be huge." He shook his head and laughed almost ruefully. "I don't think any of us are going to be sleeping for at least a week."

Danny chewed on the inside of his cheek. He privately agreed. They were probably all going to be catching what little sleep they could on the couches in the waiting area, forced to keep going on the sludge in the break room they called coffee. He most likely wouldn't see Molly for a while, unless by some slim chance she ended up being assigned to the case.

"Nothing we can't handle, right?" Danny asked, playfully punching Martin in the shoulder.

Martin laughed and nodded. "You and me, no problem," he said. "But it's not us I'm worried about."

Danny glanced at Sam, who was now attempting to get some work done. She was surrounded by stacks of papers and was shuffling haphazardly through them. Every so often, she would underline something. She still looked like she was going to throw up at any moment, though. "She'll be fine. According to Molly, she's super human."

Martin grinned. "Don't I know it." He shrugged and jammed his hands into his pockets. "I'm probably just overreacting. Sam thinks I'm being overprotective, you know, but I just… I just worry about her, is all." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "You are so lucky that you don't work with Molly."

"I guess so," Danny said, furrowing his brow. Maybe Martin and Sam did have problems working together. There were obviously things going on that they didn't make public; but, then again, they were good at that. And Martin had a point. Danny worried about Molly enough as it was without having any clue what she did when she went to work in the morning. If he worked with her, if he knew what she faced every day, he would give himself an ulcer.

Desperate to change the subject, Danny said, "Hey, what did forensics say about all those hairs we found at the agent's apartment?"

Martin pointed down the hallway. "I was on my way to forensics now, actually. I'll let you know what I find out."

When Martin had disappeared around the corner, Danny made his way through the maze of desks until he was leaning over Sam's. "Hey," he said. He smiled at her.

She returned the smile, looking genuinely happy, albeit slightly nauseous. "Hey, yourself," she said. "Oh, would you tell Molly that I am hurt and offended that she didn't bring coffee when she stopped by earlier?"

Danny couldn't help but laugh at that. "I'll pass the message along. I think she had other things on her mind, though."

Sam shook her head. "Still no excuse for not bringing coffee. Or pizza. I am suddenly very much in the mood for pizza." She was still shuffling through stacks of papers, which she did in silence for a few moments before she cleared her throat and spoke again. "So, um… How are things going with you guys?"

Danny shrugged, suddenly paranoid. Did Sam know something that he didn't? "Fine."

Sam met his gaze and licked her lips. "It's just that when Molly was here earlier, she seemed a little – I don't know – tense."

Danny scratched the back of his head. "It's this missing agent. It's got her all worked up." But as he said the words, he wondered if that were true.

Sam pursed her lips. "I don't know. It seemed like something else was bothering her."

Danny bit his lip, hoping that what was bothering Molly had absolutely nothing to do with what he had said about getting married. He'd assumed – when she'd shown up at the office and couldn't find the words to ask him what she wanted to ask him – that she was going to bring up the marriage question. He had no idea why he assumed that, when there were hundreds of other plausible reasons for her to pop by on her lunch break. And thinking that, it caught him off guard. The topic of marriage was something they generally avoided – and had ever since that morning nearly six months ago when she'd asked him if he ever thought about it.

He did think about it. He thought it about a lot more often now that Martin and Sam's wedding – in which he was best man – was fast approaching. He told Molly that they'd agreed that neither of them was ready for marriage, but the truth was that he had been trying to summon up the courage to propose for weeks now. He just couldn't do it. He was a wimp.

He shrugged again. "I didn't notice anything."

Sam gave him a half-hearted smile. "Of course not. You're a man. It's all right. I'll worm it out of her later."

And Danny had no doubts that she would do just that.

* * *

Danny surveyed the agents that the CIA had sent over to assist with the investigation. One of them Danny recognized as Molly's supervisor, David Markum. The others were introduced so quickly that Danny really didn't catch their names. Both Jack and Markum led the meeting, though mostly Markum spoke, explaining what Special Agent Dubai had passed onto them before disappearing. It seemed as though he had gotten pretty deep into the organization, which was why the CIA had been so concerned when he hadn't reported in.

"Normally," Markum said, "an operative not reporting in wouldn't cause such concern. Being deep undercover can often present obstacles when trying to keep in contact. But Dubai hasn't been heard from in over a week, and no matter how deep he is, he wouldn't go that long without attempting to get in touch with us unless something was seriously wrong."

Jack and Markum outlined the plan, which was to send another agent undercover to try and ascertain the fate of the missing agent. The agent chosen was already attempting to infiltrate the organization and was supposed to call later that night with any information. Neither of them revealed the agent's name, and for a moment Danny's heart constricted, thinking that it was Molly. So when the meeting was adjourned, Danny dashed out into the hallway and immediately dialed Molly's cell.

"Sheehan."

He breathed an immense sigh of relief. If she were undercover, she wouldn't have answered her phone like that. "Hey, it's me."

He could hear the abrupt change in her voice. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Danny said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's just… You know, with everything that's going on, I guess I just got a little paranoid. I needed to hear your voice."

Molly laughed. "You are so whipped."

Danny smiled. "That I am." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I should be home in a bit. Marty and I were afraid we'd have to crash here at the office, but it looks like we actually will be able to sleep during this case."

"Good to know. So, then, I'll see you in a bit, yeah?"

"Yeah."

There was a pause, and Danny thought she had hung up, but then she said, "I love you."

His heart constricted again. Something in her tone – it scared him. "I love you, too."

"Okay, then. Bye." And she hung up.

Danny frowned and shoved his phone back in his pocket, his knuckles coming into contact with something equally as hard. With a sigh, he pulled the ring box out and stared at it.


End file.
